


Measured Expectations

by Nabielka



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Cultural Differences, Daggers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-10 01:15:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15280362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/pseuds/Nabielka
Summary: Aravis is shown to her rooms and deprived of something dear.





	Measured Expectations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tielan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/gifts).



From the window, Aravis had a view of a little courtyard. Benches of unadorned stone lay between some flowers she did not recognise, and someone had sentimentally planted a lone willow weeping on the further side. In Calormen, she might have expected a pleasure fountain and slaves ever at the ready to fan a Tarkheena who would not perch stiffly on cool stone, but recline on cool silks beneath the shade. 

But this was the cold North, for though Archenland was not so rough as the wilds of Narnia, and its people – for it was people still, here – clung to courtly niceties, those courtly niceties were coarser than the lowest Calormene provincial court. Why, King Lune (on whom be the peace of the gods, or the peace of Aslan, as he should prefer) wore wool that seemed so coarse and untreated that Aravis might have expected to see it on an actual shepherd. But they had been kind for all that, and it was clear that she was expected to see these rooms as an honour, or at least as befitting her station. 

Queen Lucy was eyeing her. She had hesitated too long, then, but it was one thing to talk to Lasaraleen of her boudoir or of her clothes, and to know that Lasaraleen was content enough to talk on by herself. It was quite different to stand in these stripped-down rooms, which though furnished gave the impression of having been abandoned shortly after construction had finished. 

She was still dressed for fighting, though she had shed the armour, which had shone in the Hermit’s pond as though hit by the sun. Though Aravis had seen her fight and was sure that she must care about other things too, being blessed with such high rank as the gods had called her to, she too talked of styles Aravis did not know of and of crafts she had never seen. The travels had been long, and cold in the nights, and still her back ached as though the claws had only just released her. Though she had rested well enough at the Hermit’s hospitality, and fallen asleep more easily than she had many times in a palace chamber that glittered and shone, still again in that moment she felt deeply tired, and knew it was not down to mere sleeplessness. 

“Yes,” she said, striving for some jollity. “That is very charming.”

What few belongings she had with her had been laid out for her. She had known what she was giving up, or at least so she had thought, but to be presented with this bare room and all she had been able to bring with her like this hit her hard. Lasaraleen might send her a screen or an ornamental comb, but Aravis would not stop to marvel at the birdhouses or lick her fingers clean of sticky halva. She would not go home, to her books and all the little things gifted to her by her brother or her cousins or anything else that had made up her childhood. 

She was of the line of Tisrocs, of the blood of Tash. Here, in this faraway land, she would not cry, not being alone, though the sun had darkened in her eyes. 

The absence was conspicuous. Had it been less her focus, still Aravis could hardly have failed to note it. Her brother’s dagger, with which she had made the crossing over the desert, the only memento still left to her of her time spent with him and of his death, was gone. She felt its loss more keenly than she had felt as she had ridden out of the gates for the final time, as too her father might feel its loss and what it represented of his son and his sacrifice for Calavar than the loss of her. It was more than the shock of discovering the change in Shasta’s rank and the contemplation of the change of her own, more than this unexpected awkwardness with this woman who was kind, but seemed not to know what to do with Aravis.

Aravis could sympathise. She found herself at a bit of a loss of what to do with herself too, now that she had passed through the borders of Calormen. She knew little of how the Northerners spoke to each other – it was strange to think that Shasta, a fisherman’s boy, could know more of courtly manners than she – but she had wondered at how blunt they seemed. 

She said, “O Queen, I rode with a dagger at my side, as do all of the blood of Tash who pass through the great wall that surrounds Tashbaan. The dagger of my brother, which he pushed into its scabbard before he was fully grown, before he took up his regimentals. I would have it back.”

The queen’s face was shadowed. She turned her gaze away from Aravis to rest on a tapestry that had been hung on the adjoining wall. A hunter was blowing a horn amid a forest overgrown with plants that Aravis supposed was the closest Archenland came to the floral flourishes so common in Calormen. “You would not be wise to carry a Calormene weapon around Anvard. Rabadash is still held here and the soldiers who accompanied him likewise, and the memory of them will remain long after arrangements have been made with the Tisroc to trade them back.”

“I would not carry it, O fair ruler,” said Aravis, “within the gates, if King Lune (may he live forever) will guarantee my safety.”

“It is others in the court, Tarkheena, who would fear openly for their safety if you do. You rode with Prince Cor, but it is his return they will remember. You will be a potential traitor all your days,” said Queen Lucy. Her tone was gentler than her words, but still she made Aravis feel her surroundings acutely.

She thought of the Calormenes held captured, their swords given up, their ransom to be given, of the Northern monarchs standing there in the castle courtyard. “King Edmund (may he live forever) said even a traitor may mend. I am not even that.”

“You don’t know of what you speak,” said Queen Lucy, her voice suddenly sharp. She gave Aravis a long searching look, her lips pursed. Then she gave a deep sigh, like one very weary, and rummaged in her skirts. She pulled out a dagger, straighter than the Calormene style allowed, with a jade handle, and held it out. “My sister might give you something you can tuck away in your hair when you pin it up. I wouldn’t know about that.” With a smile, she shook out her hair, which was cut short, much like Corin’s. “But this at least you can take with you, and tuck it away in your belt without great attention.”

“My brother’s dagger, O lady of the archers,” said Aravis, not moving to take that of the queen. 

“It is lost to you, Tarkheena, without the agreement of King Lune. And with the Rabadash and his band still in Archenland, it’ll be a fair time before he’s likely to consider that politic. Even if Prince Cor asks it of him.”

It took Aravis a beat to remember who Prince Cor was. Even then, she could not feel sure of his assistance. He had little good to remember of Calormen, or of Tarkhaans, and much reason to throw himself into the habits of Archenland. 

But though Queen Lucy was cordial, it was clear she could not expect any intercession from her side, or from others in Narnia, whither she had set her road on Hwin’s tales. Aravis had nothing else of her brother save her own memories. Nobody now would tell her tales of childhood she had forgotten, nor would she meet any of her brother’s companions-in-arms, who had accompanied him to the far west from whence he had never returned. She would not work her way through the training forms he had taught her and imagine again his form beside hers, his grip adjusting her hold and her swing. 

The thought that the path to regaining that led through applying herself to a fisherman’s boy rankled. She reached out to take the dagger. 

“You must adapt,” said the queen softly. In a surge of bitterness that threatened to choke her, Aravis wondered what she could possibly know about it. She had not ridden out of her home and glanced back at it just before it disappeared from sight and known it would never return. She had not ridden for a place she had thought a refuge only to be denied her only keepsake of a loved one, to be replaced with a bare substitution in a style she did not know, and which she could ill use.

The sun was dark in her eyes but with the queen’s eyes on her, she could not weep. She only bowed her head and said, to the carpet and not to that face which looked fair but caused the sun to be dark in the eyes of a desolate Tarkheena, “To hear is to obey, O Queen.”


End file.
